This is a schematic representation of how you should go about creating content for your blog (or website) – let me give you some insight on how to go about doing things …

Being the expert you are on your activity you’ll certainly have a lot of things to say, it’s only a matter of getting them organized in your head first, then on paper and finally under the form of a post (you’ll be very proud of yourself once you produce your first post).

Writing for the web calls for some additional attention: normally we are used to suppressing word we believe are “unnecessary” because “it’s understood” … but if a search engine is listening, things change.

Search Engines do not understand our intent – either we say them or we don’t – if we don’t then we probably missed an opportunity to use a keyword someone may use to query the search engines and identify websites just like yours. Thats’ why it’s important not to leave words to imagination.

Searching is a unique way of representing our needs and expectations. As I have recently stated during a presentation at the International Search Summit in London late last year (November 2008):

Keywords are a state of mind

You can easily anticipate just how different each and every one of us use the search engines to find what we define as relevant websites. So how can you identify which words people are using ? There are 2 different paths to follow, depending on where you are in the process of creating your blog.

Starting a new blog

Starting a new blog is challenging also in identifying appropriate keywords that best fit the search patterns of your potential users. Rest assured your readers search habits will differ significantly from yours because:

you are the expert and master of a vocabulary typical of the expert

you readers are not experts and struggle to identify words representing their needs

You can identify relevant phrases used by people interested in your products and services. You’ll be surprised to see just how articulated and diversely people can search. By doing so you can focus on those keywords that are relevant to your business with less competition, and in turn increase significantly your chances of ranking well on the search engines.

This is your first go at things.

The best tool to identify great keywords for our blog is your blog itself: use your blog to do some simple research and identify which keywords are sending traffic. There are some cool tools to do this – the one I like most is hittail

Write your posts and use the keywords you identified using these tools. Remember to use them every time there is a relevant opportunity to do so.

Don’t exaggerate with keywords.

Read your post once you’ve written it – if it doesn’t sound right, don’t publish, make corrections, you’re writing for your readers AND the search engines.

Don’t forget to write descriptive and compelling TITLE TAGS and META DESCRIPTIONS (remember I gave you all the information in my post on WordPress Plugins).

Research your keywords

Finding new keywords is a relentless effort – the more you put into this activity the more traffic (and orders) you get back. It’s that simple.

Finding new business opportunities happens every day online: trial and error are your allies in this never ending keyword discovery game.

11 Replies

Hi Sante there are some other great tools for finding your keywords, I highly recommend Wordtracker, you do have to pay for it will help a great deal with identifying which keywords have the most searches and least amount of competition. Another great tool is Woopra, which can provide a wealth of information about your site visitors, there is even a pop up box so you can interact with your site visitors live, that is if it doesn’t frighten them off and its free which helps.

Dieta Cukrzycowa

I’m not sure if putting so much work into writing a single post just so it gets a little higher slot in the search engine results is the best idea. I don’t agree with “you’re writing for your readers AND the search engines”. I think you should write just for your readers and if by some accident the post will also appeal to search engines then you’re lucky. D.

Great post. Usually people underestimate the importance of keyword research. They prefer using their intuition which isn’t such a good idea. It is necessary to emphasize the importance of keyword research.

Getting keywords right is tough thankless task. This is very good precise of what is required cheers

very well said topic here…

Cali

That’s a very good and helpful guide to selecting your keywords for a post, its also worth noting not to go overboard with keywords and stick to targeting 2-3 keywords/phrases maximum per post, otherwise the search engines become confused as to what your page is about.

Making your blog productive is a full time job in itself! Keyword analysis forms the base of optimising your blog… I use a few tools from google to analyse my site and wordpress’s tools for my blog…

קידום במנועי חיפוש

Lately, Google had presented thei last technololgy called Google Instant. This technology, to my belief has great impact on the way people think when searching for a query. Today Google makes the thinking for most of the people. Some of the long-tails are already dead.